February 1 Page 2

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

February 1 Page 2 Imphal Times Supplementary issue 2 Editorial National & International News Imphal, Monday, February 1, 2016 Aung San Suu Kyi leads party into historic Burma parliament Positive attitude Despite the landslide, Burma’s constitution reserves 25 % of seats to the military The Strife torn State of Manipur, inspite of the unenviable tag By Esther Htusan, of a disturbed area, has much more potential and unexplored The Associated Press Ethnic rebellions potential than that of being one with the most prolific and Yangoon, Feb 1: Burma’s parliament a threat industrious system for churning out militant groups, thought dominated by pro-democracy leader The military called an election in the tag is unlikely to come off anytime soon in the foreseeable Aung San Suu Kyi’s party on 1990, which Suu Kyi’s party won future. On a brighter note, we have some of the most diverse Monday began a new and historic handsomely, only to see the results and varied vegetables, fruits, pulses, cereals and grains. session that will install the country’s annulled by the military and many of Condiments that has not yet been regular ingredients in first democratically elected its leading members harassed and Mainland India has been in use in the North East for centuries. government in more than 50 years. jailed. Suu Kyi was put under house The introduction of Korean channel “Arirang” revealed an The National League for Democracy arrest prior to the 1990 election and astonishing similarity, both in the ingredients as well as in the won a landslide in the Nov. 8 spent 15 of the next 22 years mostly methods of preparations, in the diets of the two regions. Our elections, winning 80 per cent of the confined to her lakeside villa in Yangon. elders, much to our chagrin and resentment, used to refer to seats in the two houses of She was under house arrest when she the imported hybrid vegetables and fruits as those from the parliament to defeat the military- won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. “Block”, and preferred the local varieties of everything. That Establishing democracy is only one preference has now started to make sense, more than ever, backed Union Solidarity and Suu Kyi is constitutionally barred hurdle the country faces. The new with the perceptible difference in the aroma and taste between Development Party. from taking the presidency, and has government will also have to contend the imported hybrids and the local varieties. Anyone who had a Forces rush to Legislators from the two parties and vowed to rule from behind the with various ethnic rebellions in several friend or near one from outside as a guest in Manipur will surely from smaller ethnic minority parties scenes through a proxy. She has parts of the country. The military- have received compliments on the distinct aroma and taste of violence-hit as well as nominated military not announced who her party will backed government signed a peace the dishes of the state. All these has been a clear indication of representatives filed into the nominate for president. pact with more than dozen smaller the unique qualities of the plants and vegetables grown on the Andhra town cavernous parliament for the “We don’t know exactly when the ethnic armies before the elections but soil of the State whose more than 70% of it’s population is still IANS session in which the members took presidential election will happen. major groups have stayed away, and engaged in agriculture and other allied activities. So what does Vishakapatnam, Feb 1: a joint oath of office. We cannot tell you anything about fighting continues in many states. all these discussions point to? And how do we utilize these to Additional police and The session marks a historic who will be nominated as Most are fighting for autonomy and the fullest? There is no doubt that the distinct aroma, varieties paramilitary forces were rushed turnaround for the NLD, which for the presidential candidates as well,” rights over their resource-rich land. and extent of availability of these plants, herbs and vegetables to coastal Andhra Pradesh on years was suppressed by the said Zayar Thaw, an NLD legislator. “I hope this will be a good opportunity has been confined to the local market. While the reasons are Monday, a day after large-scale military, which had ruled the country Despite its landslide victory, the for us to speak out for the ethnic many and varied, yet it is pretty clear that there is an apparent violence rocked Tuni town in directly or indirectly after seizing NLD in practice will have to share people and demand indigenous lack of enthusiasm and earnestness on the part of the East Godavari district during a power in 1962. NLD leaders power with the military, for which rights,” said Lama Naw Aung, a lower Government to explore and exploit markets outside the State protest by Kapus demanding including Suu Kyi and other critics the constitution reserves 25 per house member from the Kachin State and beyond. The latest confirmation of the interest shown reservation. were jailed, and overt political cent of the seats in parliament. Suu Democracy Party, representing the by people outside the State for products grown in the State Police imposed prohibitory activity was crushed. Kyi has met with senior military Kachin minority who are engaged in is the report about a certain person from the United States orders banning assembly of four The Southeast Asian nation, also leaders to try to ensure a smooth ongoing battles with the army in the inquiring about the possibility of exporting the black rice or more persons across East known as Myanmar, started moving change of government, and they east of the country. “I think there will (Chak Hao) through a processing factory in India, and this is Godavari district and beefed up away from dictatorship toward have vowed not to interfere. be a change because Aung San Suu just one instance. This positive development should be an security to prevent any democracy in 2011, when the Thein Sein’s military-backed USDP Kyi might want to finish the work for eye opener of the potential the State holds for earning untoward incident. military rulers agreed to hand over won a 2010 election in which the the ethnics that her father didn’t get a through exporting of it’s varied and unique agricultural Senior police officials including power to a nominally civilian NLD refused to participate, chance to do,” he said, referring to products after due finishing processes. It would be a blunder additional director general of government headed by President protesting that it was held under Myanmar’s independence hero Aung and a shame for everyone if the State is reduced to a supplier police (law and order) R P Thein Sein, a general turned unfair conditions. After several San who united various national of raw products only. The need of the hour is for developing Thakur have reached Tuni to reformist. changes in the election law, the NLD groups. He and six of his colleagues a tertiary sector that provides value addition to the products review the situation. He will stand down in late March or contested several dozen by- were assassinated in July 1947, six and thus provides double benefit to those involved. The Police began investigations into early April when an NLD president elections in 2012, winning virtually months before Myanmar’s products are there. The steps to mass produce them, to Sunday’s violence in which a takes over. all of them. independence. process them and to market them needs a systematic train, two police stations and 25 approach that coordinates and complements each of the vehicles were torched. Fifteen components in the chain of process. It is time to make a policemen and four railway Contd. from previous issue radical change in the approach towards agriculture from that employees were injured in the of a subsistence one to that of a highly rewarding, financially violence. lucrative and emotionally fulfilling occupation. That change The investigating officials were History of Manipur as refleced in the needs to be initiated by those who are assigned just to do screening video footage to that, else our people will just be the farmers who produce identify miscreants who torched the things others outside the State will buy who will then train and police stations. The socio-cultural ties of hills & plain convert these raw materials into finished products who will arrests are likely to be made later then sell it to the State at an exorbitant price. Heard the on Monday. (5) Affinity in Vocabulary: No Manipuri Chothe English story before? Got the drift? Personnel of Andhra Pradesh Being under the Tibeto- 1. Sangbai Shangpaai Paddy basket Burman Family group speaking 2. Chairung Chainarung Cheek special police, central reserve 3. Tathak-Yakha Yathak- police force (CRPF), rapid action dialects of the same language, Yakha Upper and lower jaws Afghan CEO calls on Modi force and Indo-Tibetan border the Meiteis, Nagas and Kukis 4. Pomphi Pawnphi police (ITBP) have been ought to have certain amount (Pawn = cloth; AP here on Sunday on a five-day visit phi = joining) Cloth (thick blanket) deployed in Tuni and other of linguistic affinity which New Delhi, Feb 1: Afghan Chief to India, is also scheduled to meet 5. Nahong Nao-pawn Baby cloth to places in the district. should be manifested in their Executive Officer and Head of the External Affairs Minister Sushma carry on shoulders Kumar Viswajeet, inspector vocabularies. In this regard it Council of Ministers Abdullah Swaraj. general of police, north coastal will be relevant to note that – Under the circumstances, we may examine as to how far as these people Abdullah called on Prime Minister He will leave for Jaipur on Tuesday Andhra, told reporters in Tuni (i) Kuki language is called in related or otherwise in regard to language also.
Recommended publications
  • Origin and Development of the Meitei Language
    International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Modern Education (IJMRME) ISSN (Online): 2454 - 6119 (www.rdmodernresearch.org) Volume II, Issue I, 2016 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEITEI LANGUAGE Khongbantabam Naobi Devi Ph.D Scholar, Department of English, Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai, Tamilnadu Abstract: Meitei language is an Indo-Aryan language. The Indo- Aryans came to Manipur and settled in the Manipur from the 4th century B.C. onwards. The noted historian and scholar R.K. Jhalajit Singh present his views on the topic to Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, the great scholar and experts on language. He expressed as Meitei language may not belong to the Kuki- Chin sub-group of the Tibeto-Burman branch; but belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family of language. All the language that belongs to the Tibeto-Burman, a sub-branch of the Sino- Tibetan family of languages, is mono- syllabic. The Meiteis language is not a monosyllabic language; it is a polysyllabic language. In meiteis language, majority of words have more than one syllable. A language should be classified because of grammar. This is the universal principle accepted on all. A language cannot be classified according to vocabulary. If we begin to classify a language according to its vocabulary, the results will be incorrect. The first settlers of the Indo-Aryans in Manipur spoke Sanskrit. Later settlers spoke Prakrit. When Prakrit was removed as spoken language, they spoke Apabhransha.. The combination of Apabhransha and Mongoloid languages gave birth to the Manipuri language by about 1074 A.D. In the olden days of the Meitei language, which was formed by the interaction of Apabhransha and Mongoloid languages, the most important words were taken from Sanskrit.
    [Show full text]
  • THE LANGUAGES of MANIPUR: a CASE STUDY of the KUKI-CHIN LANGUAGES* Pauthang Haokip Department of Linguistics, Assam University, Silchar
    Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area Volume 34.1 — April 2011 THE LANGUAGES OF MANIPUR: A CASE STUDY OF THE KUKI-CHIN LANGUAGES* Pauthang Haokip Department of Linguistics, Assam University, Silchar Abstract: Manipur is primarily the home of various speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages. Aside from the Tibeto-Burman speakers, there are substantial numbers of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers in different parts of the state who have come here either as traders or as workers. Keeping in view the lack of proper information on the languages of Manipur, this paper presents a brief outline of the languages spoken in the state of Manipur in general and Kuki-Chin languages in particular. The social relationships which different linguistic groups enter into with one another are often political in nature and are seldom based on genetic relationship. Thus, Manipur presents an intriguing area of research in that a researcher can end up making wrong conclusions about the relationships among the various linguistic groups, unless one thoroughly understands which groups of languages are genetically related and distinct from other social or political groupings. To dispel such misconstrued notions which can at times mislead researchers in the study of the languages, this paper provides an insight into the factors linguists must take into consideration before working in Manipur. The data on Kuki-Chin languages are primarily based on my own information as a resident of Churachandpur district, which is further supported by field work conducted in Churachandpur district during the period of 2003-2005 while I was working for the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, as a research investigator.
    [Show full text]
  • Neo-Vernacularization of South Asian Languages
    LLanguageanguage EEndangermentndangerment andand PPreservationreservation inin SSouthouth AAsiasia ed. by Hugo C. Cardoso Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 7 Language Endangerment and Preservation in South Asia ed. by Hugo C. Cardoso Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 7 PUBLISHED AS A SPECIAL PUBLICATION OF LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION & CONSERVATION LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT AND PRESERVATION IN SOUTH ASIA Special Publication No. 7 (January 2014) ed. by Hugo C. Cardoso LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION & CONSERVATION Department of Linguistics, UHM Moore Hall 569 1890 East-West Road Honolulu, Hawai’i 96822 USA http:/nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI’I PRESS 2840 Kolowalu Street Honolulu, Hawai’i 96822-1888 USA © All text and images are copyright to the authors, 2014 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License ISBN 978-0-9856211-4-8 http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4607 Contents Contributors iii Foreword 1 Hugo C. Cardoso 1 Death by other means: Neo-vernacularization of South Asian 3 languages E. Annamalai 2 Majority language death 19 Liudmila V. Khokhlova 3 Ahom and Tangsa: Case studies of language maintenance and 46 loss in North East India Stephen Morey 4 Script as a potential demarcator and stabilizer of languages in 78 South Asia Carmen Brandt 5 The lifecycle of Sri Lanka Malay 100 Umberto Ansaldo & Lisa Lim LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT AND PRESERVATION IN SOUTH ASIA iii CONTRIBUTORS E. ANNAMALAI ([email protected]) is director emeritus of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore (India). He was chair of Terralingua, a non-profit organization to promote bi-cultural diversity and a panel member of the Endangered Languages Documentation Project, London.
    [Show full text]
  • Non-Structural Case Marking in Tibeto-Burman and Artificial Languages*
    Non-structural Case Marking in Tibeto-Burman and Artificial Languages* Alexander R. Coupe Sander Lestrade Nanyang Technological University Radboud University This paper discusses the diachronic development of non-structural case marking in Tibeto- Burman and in computer simulations of language evolution. It is shown how case marking is initially motivated by the pragmatic need to disambiguate between two core arguments, but eventually may develop flagging functions that even extend into the intransitive domain. Also, it is shown how different types of case-marking may emerge from various underlying disambiguation strategies. 1. Introduction This paper was motivated by the authors’ serendipitous discovery that a computer simulation of the emergence of case marking produced results that are uncannily similar to attested grammaticalization pathways and patterns of core case marking observed in the grammars of many Tibeto-Burman (henceforth TB) languages with pragmatically-motivated case marking. When it manifests, core case marking in both the natural and artificial languages appears to be initially motivated by the same fundamental need to disambiguate semantic roles. In other words, whenever some meaning does not follow inherently from the semantics of the dependency relationship holding between a head and its arguments, it must be encoded explicitly in the grammars of both the simulated language and the natural languages. Disambiguating case marking is most likely to appear in clauses with two core arguments when either one may potentially fulfill the role of the agent. Under these circumstances, some grammatical means of distinguishing an A argument from an O argument may be required to clarify meaning. 1 Conversely, if semantic roles can be unambiguously assigned to core arguments because of the semantic nature of their referents, then there may be no overt marking, even in bivalent clauses, so the use of core case marking is observed to have a pragmatic basis.
    [Show full text]
  • Sumi Tone: a Phonological and Phonetic Description of a Tibeto-Burman Language of Nagaland
    Sumi tone: a phonological and phonetic description of a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland Amos Benjamin Teo Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Masters by Research (by Thesis Only) December 2009 School of Languages and Linguistics The University of Melbourne Abstract Previous research on Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the extreme northeast of India, has found it to have three lexical tones. However, the few phonological studies of Sumi have focused mainly on its segmental phonology and have failed to provide any substantial account of the tone system. This thesis addresses the issue by providing the first comprehensive description of tone in this language. In addition to confirming three contrastive tones, this study also presents the first acoustic phonetic analysis of Sumi, looking at the phonetic realisation of these tones and the effects of segmental perturbations on tone realisation. The first autosegmental representation of Sumi tone is offered, allowing us to account for tonal phenomena such as the assignment of surface tones to prefixes that appear to be lexically unspecified for tone. Finally, this investigation presents the first account of morphologically conditioned tone variation in Sumi, finding regular paradigmatic shifts in the tone on verb roots that undergo nominalisation. The thesis also offers a cross-linguistic comparison of the tone system of Sumi with that of other closely related Kuki-Chin-Naga languages and some preliminary observations of the historical origin and development of tone in these languages are made. This is accompanied by a typological comparison of these languages with other Tibeto-Burman languages, which shows that although these languages are spoken in what has been termed the ‘Indosphere’, their tone systems are similar to those of languages spoken further to the east in the ‘Sinosphere’.
    [Show full text]
  • Download (4MB)
    North East Indian Linguistics Volume 3 Edited by Gwendolyn Hyslop • Stephen Morey. Mark W. Post EOUNDATlON® S (j) ® Ie S Delhi· Bengaluru • Mumbai • Kolkata • Chennai • Hyderabad • Pune Published by Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd. under the imprint of Foundation Books Cambridge House, 438114 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002 Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd. C-22, C-Block, Brigade M.M., K.R. Road, Iayanagar, Bengaluru 560 070 Plot No. 80, Service Industries, Sbirvane, Sector-I, Neru!, Navi Mumbai 400 706 10 Raja Subodb Mullick Square, 2nd Floor, Kolkata 700 013 2111 (New No. 49), 1st Floor, Model School Road, Thousand Lights, Chcnnai 600 006 House No. 3-5-874/6/4, (Near Apollo Hospital), Hyderguda, Hyderabad 500 029 Agarwal Pride, 'A' Wing, 1308 Kasba Peth, Near Surya Hospital, :"Pune 411 011 © Cambridge Universiry Press India Pvt. Ltd. First Published 20 II ISBN 978-81-7596-793-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction of any part may take place without the written pennission of Cambridge University Press India Pvl. Ltd., subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements. Cambridge" Universiry Press India Pvl. Ltd. has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-parry internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset at SanchauLi Image Composers, New Deihi. Published by Manas Saikia for Cambridge University Press India Pvl. Ltd. and printed at Sanat Printers, Kundli. Haryana Contents About the Contributors v Foreword Chungkham Yashawanta Singh ix A Note from the Editors xvii The View from Manipur 1.
    [Show full text]
  • SUMI AGENTIVE and TOPIC MARKERS: NO and YE* Amos Teo Australian National University 1. INTRODUCTION in Sumi
    Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area Volume 35.1 — April 2012 SUMI AGENTIVE AND TOPIC MARKERS: NO AND YE* Amos Teo Australian National University Abstract: Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nagaland, typically marks S and A arguments with one of two enclitics: no and ye. A preliminary analysis of these two markers posits no as an agentive marker that can also mark contrastive focus on the argument and ye as a topic marker that can also mark a referent for low agentivity. By presenting new data, the paper highlights how the boundary between their semantic and pragmatic functions is not always clear and that categorising no and ye is not always unproblematic. Keywords: case, agentive, ergative, pragmatics, topic, grammaticalisation, Naga, Sumi, Tibeto-Burman 1. INTRODUCTION In Sumi (also known as Sema and Simi), a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nagaland, North-east India, S and A arguments in intransitive and transitive clauses are typically accompanied by one of two enclitics: no or ye. This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the semantic and pragmatic functions of these two markers. Like other Tibeto-Burman languages of the region, including Mongsen Ao (Coupe 2007b, 2011) and Meithei (Chelliah 2009), Sumi does not fit an ergative- absolutive grammatical system that is motivated purely by syntactic factors. The enclitic no generally functions as an agentive marker but can also carry pragmatic functions such as the marking of contrastive focus on the argument, while the marker ye acts as a topic marker, but may occasionally mark the argument for low agentivity, i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • Language,Identity and Meiteilon
    Language,identity and Meiteilon Ningombam Bupenda Meitei (St.Stephen’s College) Department of Philosophy ,University of Delhi Abstract Language and identity have played a significant role in shaping the modern nation-states. Though , in modern days, it is a result of the French Revolution and European Renaissance , the notion of identity and language if not vividly but also did exist in Athenian society. The paper makes an attempt to understand the notion of language and how and who determines a language differentiating from its dialects , and also captures the notion of identity. The paper journeys through with an understanding of the language-identity relation through some fundamentals of socio-linguistic and anthro-linguistic schools of thought. It also highlights a small case study on Meiteilon , the official language of the state of Manipur. Introduction Language and identity in today’s socio-political world have become so interwoven that either of the two are not only complementary but also can not exist without the other as the notion of identity in modern world can not be sufficed without the notion of a language which signifies one’s identity. Identity revealed through language is a modern concept born out of European Renaissance and French Revolution as language becomes not only a mere medium to communicate but a pragmatically important tool to control power through nation state, lingua franca in courts and high elitist societies besides running trade and national educational policies. Since the time of Hellenistic period when Greek is a language from linguistic coverage of the dialects of Athens , the evolution of a language either through convergence or divergence of dialects due to a change of socio-politico-cultural temporal world thereby making a possibility for modern languages like French , English , Chinese , Russian , Japanese of today to flourish 1 as not only a standard language for communication but also as a unique identity to assert their nationality in the modern world of nation states.
    [Show full text]
  • Paper Teplate
    Volume-03 ISSN: 2455-3085 (Online) Issue-02 RESEARCH REVIEW International Journal of Multidisciplinary February-2018 www.rrjournals.com [UGC Listed Journal] A Study of Interpreting Text: The Sümi Naga Folklores 1 2 Y. Hukheli Zhimomi & Dr. Priyanka Singh 1Research scholar of Sri Satya Sai University of Technology & Medical Sciences, Sehore (India) 2Associate professor of Sri Satya Sai University of Technology & Medical Sciences, Sehore (India) ARTICLE DETAILS ABSTRACT Article History Folklore connects the past with the present to the future. Hence, by studying and Published Online: 28 February 2018 interpreting the folklore of the Sümi Naga it can offer important perspectives in understanding the indigenous Sümicultural society. The Sümis folklore is a rich repository of cultural values and wisdom. Therefore it can become a key element in Keywords understanding the heritage of its people or tribe. It can also be a great element in Interpreting Text, SÜMI Naga Folklores, society, effective, understanding the history of the Sümis and can produce a feeling and a strong sentiment education. human and social values towards culture and unity andupholds the moral value of its culture and society. In this present society where human and social values are deteriorating faster than ever, folklore can provide an effective moral education in the society. Folklores contain many aspects of culture which serve as an important source of cultural knowledge and understanding. Thomas Wright has rightly said “There is no subject of inquiry relating to the history of a people more interesting than its popularmythology and superstitions”. Thomas goes on to say that folklore is the source to trace deeply the formation of its nation and its identity than in any other thing.
    [Show full text]
  • LLT ALL FINAL July 2021
    Language and Language Teaching Volume 10 Number 1 Issue 20 July 2021 Contents Editorial Notes and Comments Rajesh Kumar and Devaki Reflecting on my Experiences of Lakshminarayan Learning and Teaching Maithreyi Krishnaraj 55 Articles Needs Analysis: The First Step of Interview Curriculum Development in Language Interview with Hans Raj Dua Pedagogy Rajesh Sachdeva 61 Saba Parween and Mohammad Jahangeer Warsi 1 Landmark Language Teacher as a Language Fostering Undergraduate Students' Planner: Some Lessons from Northeast Speaking Skills through Task-Based India Language Learning and Teaching Rajesh Sachdeva 69 Ruchi Kaushik 5 Classroom Activities Teaching Listening through the CLIL Treasure Hunt Method Richa Goswami 77 Tanya Marina Brooks 13 Developing a Sense of Social Songs and all that Jazz Responsibility 19 Sharoon Sunny Devaki Lakshminarayan 79 Rhyme Teaching in English for Primary Book Reviews Classes Dialogues: English Studies in India Somya Budhori Veena Kapur 24 82 Reading Comprehension: What is it and Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, how to Develop it? Novel Spaces Santosh Upadhyay 30 Manjari Chaturvedi 86 Observations on Language Learning: Report The Indian Context English Online Capacity Building for Srishtika Prakash 36 Field Personnel Parul Sharma, Arindam Chakraborty 89 The Dynamics in Democratization of and Ameya M. R. English Language Education in Tamil Nadu Elizabeth Eldho and Rajesh Kumar 42 Space for Home Language in the Ongoing National Dialogue for Educational Reforms in Multilingual Suriname Seema Manbodh and Om Prakash 49 Editorial Rajesh Kumar and Devaki Lakshminarayan The articles in this issue of LLT are centred around three themes: language teaching methods, language planning with special reference to mother tongue and English language education.
    [Show full text]
  • 5 Gateway City
    5 Gateway City In downtown Imphal there is a major intersection where five roads meet near the Khoyathong Pukhri Achouba, a large public pukhri and important landmark. The traffic circle is busy during the day and usually staffed by local police in a small shelter raised above the traffic. It is a major route for the city’s auto-rickshaws taking passengers to and from the market. To improve traffic flow, ropes and steel barricades are used to block off certain streets at different intervals. Police threaten disobedient drivers with bamboo sticks, though the threat can be muted by subtly dropping some rupee notes on the road near the police post. There are also several eateries and pharmacies clustered around the traffic circle, feeding the dual addiction of the city’s youth to fried chicken and Spasmo Proxyvon. A short stretch of road joins this traffic circle to the main highway to Myanmar where there is also a traffic circle with a police shelter, known as LIC point after the Life Insurance Corporation of India building on the corner. This is the main entry point for vehicles bringing goods from outside the city into the market area. The flows of cars, bikes, rickshaws, bullock carts, tractors, and trucks (though they are supposed to go by a different route) cause traffic jams throughout the day. All of this makes it a crowded and slow-moving patch of the city – the perfect place for large billboards and a patch I return to often during fieldwork to look at what is being advertised; from watermelon festivals to fashions shows to new private schools.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Ergative' Marking in Tibeto-Burman
    'Ergative' Marking in Tibeto-Burman Randy J. LAPOLLA Reprinted from Yoshio Nishi, James A. Matisoff and Yasuhiko Nagano (eds.) New Horizons in Tibeto-Burman Morphosyntax SENRI ETHNOLOGICAL STUDIES 41 National Museum of Ethnology Osaka, Japan 1995 SENRI ETHNOLOGICAL STUDIES 41 1995 'Ergative' Marking in Tibeto-Burman Randy J. LAPOLLA * INTRODUCTION This paper presents the first results of a comprehensive project on comparative Tibeto-Burman (TB) morpho-syntax.l) Data on morphological forms and typological patterns were collected from one hundred fifty-one languages and dialects in the TB family. For this paper the data were surveyed for nominal 'ergative' or agentive case marking (postpositions), in an attempt to determine if it would be possible to reconstruct an ergative case marker to Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB), and in so doing learn more about the nature of grammatical organization in PTB. Ablative, instrumental, genitive, locative, and other case forms were also surveyed for possible cognacy with ergative forms, as suggested in DeLancey 1984. The results of the survey indicate that though an ergative marker can be reconstructed to some of the lower level groupings within TB, such as Proto­ Bodish, not only is there no form that cuts across the upper level groupings to the extent that it could be reconstructed to PTB, there is also no form that cuts across the lower level groupings enough to allow reconstruction to an upper level grouping, such as Bodic or Kuki-Naga. These findings support Benedict's (1972: 95ft) view that relational morphology of this type was not part of the grammatical system of PTB.
    [Show full text]